November 2013

The White House Correspondents Association and several leading media outlets have sent a letter to the White House protesting its policy of banning photographers from covering President Barack Obama at certain events.

"As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this Administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the Executive Branch of government," the WHCA board wrote in the letter delivered to the White House press office. The letter was also signed by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the White House News Photographers Association, as well as leading media outlets like ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Yahoo News. The practice is a "troubling break from tradition," the letter stated, as previous administrations have granted press access to the types of events the Obama administration now restricts. The Huffington Post, New York Times photographer Doug Mills went as far as to compare the White House to the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), otherwise known as the Russian news organization behind the propaganda of World War II.

(Nov 21)

If Germany’s special parliamentary session on US surveillance was any indication, European politicians are still worked up about former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that the revelations had “tested” US-German relations. Green Party politician Hans-Christian Strobele urged the German leader to thank Snowden and offer him asylum for discovering that her cell phone “was probably bugged.” Chancellor Merkel even got called a “scaredy-cat” for not standing up to Washington. The criticism comes as politicians in the region -- from Estonia to Germany -- are calling for the European Union to create a cloud-computing infrastructure of its own to compete with American providers like Amazon, Google, and Verizon. The idea is that if the EU has its own cloud then member states could compel providers to abide by the EU’s (comparatively) stricter data-protection rules. It's part of a backlash against the long arm of the US intelligence community that has echoes everywhere from Brazil to the United Nations. One of the main proponents of a European cloud is EU Commission Vice President Viviane Reding, who was in Washington to hammer out a treaty that would, if signed, assure that any EU citizens’ data stored in the United States be given the same privacy protections as US citizens’ data.

(Nov 21)

Connect Minnesota released new broadband availability data which shows increases among key speed tiers, including 74.5% of Minnesota households now having access to broadband at a minimum of 10 Mbps download/6 Mbps upload. Last April, the data showed that 69.19% of households had access across the state at these speeds (including mobile wireless, but excluding satellite services).

Among the findings of the new broadband availability research are:

• 74.5% of Minnesota households can access fixed and mobile broadband at speeds of at least 10 Mbps download/6 Mbps upload – the minimum speed threshold for Minnesota’s goal of ubiquitous broadband availability*. This represents an increase of more than 5 percentage points from April 2013, and for the first time in Connect Minnesota’s work, shows the impact of mobile broadband in meeting state speed goals in areas previously not served by those speeds (excluding satellite services).
• Since Connect Minnesota began measuring availability at the 10 Mbps download/6 Mbps upload speed tier in April 2011, there has been an increase of nearly 20 percentage points in fixed and mobile broadband availability from 56.4% to 74.5%.
• Nearly 96% of Minnesotans have fixed broadband available at speeds of 3 Mbps download/768 Kbps upload, the tier the Federal Communications Commission uses to determine eligibility for the Connect American Fund; when mobile broadband is included, 99.80% of Minnesota households have access at this speed tier (both excluding satellite services).
• Minnesota has seen a dramatic increase in availability at higher speed tiers over the past two years (since October 2011), including:
• 76% of households now have access to broadband service at speeds of at least 100 Mbps download/1.5 Mbps upload, an increase of 31 percentage points (excluding mobile wireless and satellite services).
• 84% of households now have access to broadband service at speeds of at least 25 Mbps download/1.5 Mbps upload, an increase of 15 percentage points (excluding mobile wireless and satellite services).
• 89% of households now have access to broadband service at speeds of at least 10 Mbps download/1.5 Mbps upload, an increase of 15 percentage points (including mobile wireless, but excluding satellite services).

(Nov 20)

Thanks to HealthCare.gov, the otherwise wonky topic of federal procurement reform is getting new momentum. And the renewed focus is giving a once-obscure House bill a boost.

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA, is getting another look with help from strange political bedfellows. To address the management problem, FITARA puts the role of chief information officer, or CIO, at the heart of federal agencies, giving those officials more budget authority, power and prominence. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) says more accountability attracts stronger candidates for those jobs. And stronger CIOs could mean better written contracts that make it harder to get away with doing bad work.

(Nov 21)